Head Coach Miranda Henson - Miranda is an experience swimming coach and teacher. She is a K-5th grade special ed teacher at Parkside Elementary and has been the assistant girls and boys swimming coach at Normal West High School. She has also coached swimming and other sports for Special Olympics at S.O.A.R. where she's helped Team Illinois at national events.
Miranda swims with the team when not coaching and has achieved two top ten times in USMS swimming.
Miranda likes swimming with others who have similar goals and push each other to achieve those goals. As a coach, she likes to help swimmers be better and more efficient while having a great time!
Coach Joe Kinkade has competed in triathlons and swim meets over the years and enjoys swimming with the team when not coaching. He has been a part of the coaching staff since 2016 and enjoys helping swimmers with all aspects of technique, but especially backstroke, from the pool deck.
Coach Rob Carroll (part-time) - Rob, John's son, was raised a swimmer, and he shows that while you can take the person out of the water, you can't take the swimmer out of the person! Rob swam competetively for the Normal Parks Sharks, the Marlins, and U-High until age 18, when he quit to pursue his undergraduate degree from IWU. Rob primarily enjoys helping newer swimmers establish a good athletic base from which to improve their strokes.
Coach Dan Bugner (bio to come)
Coach John Carroll (part-time & fill in) - John is USMS Level 2 Certified and has completed American Red Cross Lifeguard, First Aid, CPR and AED training. When not coaching, he swims with the team.
John swam for University High School and Illinois State University. He is married to Val and they have two adult children, Robert and Lauren, who both competed in swimming through their high school years. The family relocated to Salem, Oregon in the 1980s where John had his first exposure to masters swimming. He also swam with teams in Birmingham, Alabama, and Charlottesville, Virginia, before being relocated back to Bloomington/Normal.
John loves working with new swimmers who haven’t experienced competitive swimming or structured practices. Many of these new swimmers are triathletes looking to improve times in their swim portion of the event. From this aspect of coaching, John enjoys the challenge of teaching the proper technique and completing organized swim practices that will generally get results for a new swimmer.